The Port Authority of Las Palmas has reached a historic balance-sheet milestone by crossing the €900 million mark in total assets for the first time, at the close of the financial year.
The institution’s official report shows that the value of its infrastructure, land and financial resources rose to €901.6 million, consolidating steady growth in net equity, which is now close to €822.1 million. The demonstration of financial solvency, based on a solid turnover of €79.3 million, masks a tough cost-containment policy that has left the workforce of the public body at historic minimum levels.
Balance-sheet growth sharply contrasts with the gradual thinning of its human resources.
The Gran Canaria port closed the last year with an average workforce of just 315 workers, the lowest figure recorded over the entire past decade. This cut in operational and administrative staff has taken shape after years of amortising job positions and uncovered retirements, placing the number of employees far below the 339 professionals the entity had in 2017, and even below the 327 workers on active payroll in 2015.
This aggressive staffing reduction has boosted average profitability per employee while raising concerns about the institution’s operational capacity.
The €79.3 million billed in the last financial year was handled by a team that is 7% smaller than a decade ago, pushing the billing ratio to over €250,000 per worker. The lack of headcount directly affects essential services such as port police, security inspection work at the docks across Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, and slows the administrative processing of new industrial land concessions.
The port’s financial clean-up has been built on strict control of personnel costs.
This has allowed benefits to be retained and reserves to be increased year after year. Union criticisms suggest that the freeze on public port employment suffocates day-to-day management at a time when the port is operating at peak levels in fuel supply and container traffic. The sharp rise in assets, which added nearly €80 million since the pandemic year, rests on an increasingly weakened and overloaded labor structure, indicating that balance-sheet efficiency has been achieved at the expense of cutting public employment in the docks.
La entradaLa paradoja del Puerto de Las Palmas: el activo supera los 900 millones mientras la plantilla se desploma a mínimos se publicó primero en canarymaritime.com.
